Ever since Adeline was born, she had been rejected coldly because her family believed her to bring bad luck. Her father's first wife died two weeks after giving birth to her, the fifth child. Soon, her father remarries Jeanne Prosperi (referred to as "Niang" in most of the story, an old fashioned way for "mother" in Mandarin Chinese), a beautiful half-French woman. She regards his first five children, especially Adeline, with distaste and cruelty while favouring her younger son, Franklin, and daughter, Susan, both born soon after the marriage.
The book outlines Adeline's struggle to find a place where she feels she belongs. She did not get very much love from her parents, she finds some solace in relationships with her grandfather (Ye Ye) and her Aunt Baba, but they are taken from her as Niang deems them to exert a bad influence on the children. Adeline immerses herself in striving for academic achievement in the hope of winning her family's appreciation, but also for its own rewards as she finds great pleasure in words and scholarly success, progressing in things that her father and step-mother had never expected, for example by topping her class. She has many friends at school who love her for who she is, but they do not know about her inside life.
